Join Nucleate San Diego and Twist Bioscience for State of AI × Biotech, a discussion on where AI is already creating tangible value across biotech R&D, where technical and translational barriers remain, and which applications are most likely to shape the field next.

AI is moving rapidly from proof of concept toward integration across biotechnology, with generative models, biological foundation models, and AI-enabled discovery platforms beginning to influence how biological systems are understood, designed, and interrogated.As the field moves toward real-world application, questions around validation, scalability, and translational impact are becoming increasingly important. These challenges are especially relevant at the intersection of AI and synthetic biology, where advances in biological engineering are expanding our capacity to build, test, and experimentally validate computationally designed systems.This event opens the Nucleate Inside Series, a chapter-wide program exploring the major avenues through which AI is influencing biotechnology, including drug discovery, lab automation, cell and gene therapy, and clinical translation, alongside the fundamentals of venture creation and building a biotechnology company.Panelists:

  • Edmond Atindaana, PhD - Senior Advisor, Novel Platforms, Eli Lilly- PhD at Michigan on high-throughput analysis of HIV-1 expression and latency; now works on novel therapeutic platforms at Lilly, bringing the pharma-side view of which computational tools actually survive contact with a discovery pipeline.

  • Alejandro Chavez, MD PhD - Associate Professor, UC San Diego- Trained with George Church and Jim Collins at the Wyss Institute; his lab builds Cas9-based tools for programmable control of DNA and RNA at genome scale: the kind of high-throughput perturbation data that today's models are trained on.

  • Graham McVicker, PhD - Associate Professor, Salk Institute- Came to biology from computer science and now uses machine learning to predict the regulatory function of noncoding variants, pairing those models with CRISPR screens run in his own lab.

Moderated by:

  • Jose Olucha, PhD - Twist Bioscience- PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from the University of Kansas; now a staff product manager at Twist, on the synthesis side that turns designed sequences into physical DNA.

About the Host:Nucleate is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the next generation of biotech leaders. With chapters spanning 41 geographic regions and participation from over 280 academic institutions, Nucleate sparks new intellectual communities and embeds emerging talent within a global biotech community. Through open-access educational programming, Nucleate helps democratize biotech innovation, removing barriers and helping founders concentrate on building transformational technologies. Visit www.nucleate.org for more information, and visit https://nucleate.org/privacy-policy/ to read our privacy policy.We want to thank our HQ supporters for championing our open-access mission and empowering the next generation of biotech entrepreneurs!Platinum: Eli Lilly and Company, Genentech, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, MilliporeSigmaPhilanthropic Support: Lyda Hill PhilanthropiesPreferred Partners: Pillar VC, Amino Collective, Excedr, Mercury, Brex, Fedsprout, Browne ConsultingIn-Kind Support: AcademicLabs, Lens.org, SynBioBeta